


Untitled Kid!Fic

by spacebromance



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-14 15:32:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2197077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacebromance/pseuds/spacebromance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Abandoned, Incomplete.] After five years' separation, Hikaru meets Pavel's son again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled Kid!Fic

Nikolai Pavelevich Chekov is born the day his father dies.

His birth records are sealed by Starfleet. But his father’s service record is not.

Ensign Pavel Andreievich Chekov, age 21, while in active service as Navigator aboard the Federation starship _Enterprise_ , sustained grievous bodily injury during a diplomatic mission on Sarusa Prime. He died as a result of his injuries. His death was categorized as ‘accidental,’ and the Federation and Sarusan Council brokered a mutually beneficial trade agreement shortly thereafter.

There are several notes of exceptional achievement in his record, as well as personal commendations from almost the entire complement of bridge officers aboard the _Enterprise_. A transcript of the eulogy delivered at his funeral, by Captain James T. Kirk, is included in the file as a personal note.

The Medal of Distinguished Service, conferred upon Ensign Chekov posthumously, was delivered into the custody of a Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, as per Ensign Chekov’s written will.

 

 

It’s snowing, and Nikolai can’t find his gloves.

He lingers in the classroom, packing his bag with deliberate slowness and waiting for the other students to leave. He doesn’t want them to see him looking; he doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction. But as soon as the classroom is empty, he searches: rifling through the closets and crawling beneath the coat racks, hoping that he really _has_ just misplaced them this time, that they’ve fallen innocently from his coat pockets and he’ll find them tucked behind this next chair leg or that stack of books.

_Please,_ he hopes, _please, let them still be here, just this once._

But the search is fruitless. There’s no evidence of his mittens anywhere, and he despairs, because this is the sixth pair he’s lost this year and it’s only January.

His aunt will be disappointed.

She has little patience for frivolous things. His aunt—technically his great aunt, his father’s aunt—is a respected geneticist, with research grants to pursue and laboratories to supervise and no inclination to have or care for a child. But Nikolai has no other surviving family on his father’s side, and no mother to speak of at all, so he’s fallen to her care.

She doesn’t treat him unkindly. Quite the opposite, Niko is provided with everything that he could need. But he’s only seven years old. He requires frequent supervision, and he’s awkward and clumsy and constantly outgrowing (or losing) his clothes, and he attends twice-weekly Standard immersion classes to and from which he has to be shuttled. He suffocates her under the weight of his helpless dependence, and that naturally breeds a certain degree of… frustration.

He’s an unasked-for burden.

Nikolai yearns for self-sufficiency more than anything. He wants to be able to care for himself so his aunt won’t have to, so that she can focus on her work again. He doesn’t want to be an inconvenience.

But he can’t even keep his _stupid_ gloves.

His breathing takes on a hitching quality that precipitates tears, and Niko shoulders his bag and flees the classroom as they begin to gather in his eyes. He can’t afford to let anyone see him crying—not the students, and _definitely_ not the teachers. They already think he’s too young to be in class with older students; if they catch him crying, they’ll send him back to one of the younger grades for sure.

So he’ll have to take the long way home: across the schoolyard and around the far side of the park, where no one will see him.

Niko keeps his head down, and sprints across the snow-covered playground for a gate in the fence. The streets are mostly empty on this side of the school: no yard monitors or waiting parents or classmates, just one man loitering in the sidewalk to watch the crowd of students around the schoolfront disperse. Nikolai can escape this way unseen, and he’s almost at the gate when he slips on an iced-over mudslick in the grass and crashes into the ground.

He lies face-down in the snow for a moment, breathing hard.

It doesn’t really hurt. But for some reason—maybe the shock or the indignity of it, or maybe just at the _unfairness_ of everything—he starts crying in earnest. The tears stream out of him, and then the sobs: loud, jagged things that make him feel childish and stupid, which only makes him cry harder. He doesn’t know what he’s crying for, but he can’t seem to stop now that he’s started, and he’s still gasping and sobbing when a pair of adult-sized feet rush over.

His lip quivers as he sucks in a steadying breath, and wipes at his face with a sleeve so maybe they’ll think he’s just crying because he’s hurt and they won’t kick him out.

Except it’s not one of the yard monitors.

“Hey, are you okay?” a voice asks, and the words aren’t spoken in Russian; they’re flawless Standard.

Nikolai blinks up in surprise.

There’s a dark-haired man leaning over him: the man from the sidewalk. He’s American by his accent, and wearing a long, black jacket with the Starfleet insignia on it—command division—but the jacket doesn’t look thick enough for the weather. Even so, he kneels down in the snow beside Nikolai and smiles easily as he helps him to his feet.

“You probably can’t understand a word I’m saying,” the man says. “But let’s get the snow off of you, and then we’ll check to make sure all the fingers and toes are still working, yeah?”

He brushes at the snow on Niko’s jacket, and then he big wool cap, causing the hat to slide sideways. Niko pulls it off to straighten it.

The stranger falters.

Nikolai looks up, and the easy smile has been replaced with startled shock. The man pulls his hands back from Niko like he’s been burned, and Nikolai checks himself over in concern, but there’s no blood or gore, no broken bones. He touches nervously at his head and feels only his curly hair.

“Um,” Niko says. And his Standard is good. He gets his ‘v’s and ‘w’s mixed up sometimes, but otherwise his instructors say he speaks like Standard were his first language. But he’s so shaken by the reaction that he has to search for the words. “I’m okay, I think? I just—slipped.”

The man continues to stare.

Niko brushes the snow off his elbows and knees. His tears have mostly stopped—startled out of him—and he dries his face with his sleeve, then sniffles and wipes at the snot dripping from his nose. When the stranger still hasn’t stopped staring at him like that, Niko shuffles nervously in place and pulls his wool cap back onto his head.

The man’s hands convulse in the air.

Niko watches them: the way they can’t seem to decide what they want to do, reaching up toward Niko’s face and down for his shoulders and then pulling back—away—like they’re afraid to actually touch.

Nikolai’s always meeting with Starfleet officers. Granted, he’s never met them at his _school_ before, but he attends monthly therapy sessions at the St. Petersburg Starfleet Medical Annex, and his regular health check-ups and twice yearly aptitude tests, and of course the Immersion School, which is sponsored by Starfleet even though the officers don’t wear their uniforms there.

But in all his meetings, he’s never met a officer like this man before: with his soft eyes and easy smiles, who either can’t or won’t speak Russian but speaks perfect Standard with such kindness, whose clothes that are so obviously ill-suited for the cold that he will surely freeze but who seems so warm anyway.

Niko leans forward, politely curious, and the man flinches away.

“You, um.” The man’s voice shakes. He clears his throat, and stares down at the snow maybe to steady himself. “You still speak Standard?”

“Yes,” Niko nods. The word ‘still’ echoes through his head, like a hanging question. “I’m learning.”

They lapse into silence again. The man nods down at the snow, and then looks up at Nikolai again like he can’t help himself—like he’s afraid to look away, like he’s trying to commit this moment to memory. Niko cannot remember anyone ever looking at him like this before: like he’s something precious. It unfurls in his heart, half afraid and half deliriously hopeful.

‘ _Who are you?’_ Niko wants to ask. And, _‘Are you here for me?_ ’ But he doesn’t dare.

“Your hands. Are—um.” The man’s voice breaks. He swallows thickly, and gestures to Niko’s mittenless hands, which are turning an angry pink from exposure. “Are they cold?”

Niko nods.

He swallows, too, feeling reckless.

“They steal my gloves,” Niko breathes. The teachers never believe him; they tell him it isn’t nice to make accusations against his fellow students. But he thinks, with a precipitous kind of certainty, that this stranger will believe him. He looks up, and implores with everything in him that this man will _believe him._ “They don’t like me because I’m smarter than them, so they take them from my coat pockets when I’m not looking.”

“Yeah.” The man nods, and smiles sadly, like this is a cruelty that he wishes he could save Niko from. “Yeah, kids are like that sometimes. But you’ll—”

He glances up at Nikolai’s curls, which are poking out from beneath his hat, and Niko can see in his eyes how much he wants to tuck them back into place. Like the parents at the playground who reach down to push the hair out of their childrens’ eyes and kiss them sweetly on the forehead.

The man looks up at the sky like he’s praying for strength. When he looks back down, he won’t meet Nikolai’s eyes.

He starts to pull off his gloves—even though he’s under-dressed for the cold, with a coat that’s much too thin and no hat or snowboots—and he must be freezing, but he pulls off his gloves and takes Nikolai’s cold hands in his warm ones and begins to pulls the soft fabric over Nikolai’s stiff, red fingers.

Nikolai breathes in a sharp breath of surprise. His eyes are wide as saucers, and he watches the man pull first one glove over his hand, and then the other, with a tenderness that it swells in Niko’s chest. It doesn’t matter that the gloves are much too large, that his whole hand can fit into the palm and he has to ball his fists into the fabric to keep them from sliding off. They’re soft, and still warm with residual heat, and Nikolai clutches at them and stares.

The stranger wraps his bare hands around Niko’s gloved ones, and holds them for a moment. His expression is wretched, like it pains him to do this, and Niko tries to pull the gloves off, but the man stops him, his grip gentle but firm.

“It’ll get better, I promise.” he says to Niko. His voice is thick with emotion. “I know it’s not easy to be younger than everyone else all the time, and it must be— _God,_ I know you feel alone, all the time. But.” The man squeezes Niko’s hands like he’s the one imploring now: _believe me._ “You’ll find a place you belong, someday. I promise. I _promise._ ”

Nikolai breathes into the space between them, and his eyes start to water again, but for a completely different reason.

“Who—“

But the man shakes his head. He lets go of Niko’s hands and hovers his own hands to either side of Niko’s face, like he wants to cradle him but even the idea of it is too painful.

“You’d. You’d better—“ The man stands and reels backward, and Nikolai doesn’t understand, he _doesn’t understand_. The man won’t meet his eyes, looking at the snow or the sky or the school buildings and all the other students milling in front of it. He nods his head toward the gate, and his voice is carefully neutral even though his face isn’t. “You’d better get home now.”

“But I’ll see you again, won’t I?” Niko asks. Because there’s finality in the air, and he’s desperate to understand _why._ “At the Starfleet offices? I’m there sometimes—I’ll see you there, won’t I?”

It was the wrong thing to say. The man collapses in on himself, closes his eyes and shakes his head with shork, jerky gestures—almost mechanical—and it’s not so much in answer to the question as it is a plea for Nikolai not to do this. His expression is grief-stricken, and his breath comes out in a brutal sob. “You have to go home now.”

And there’s a half-remembered dream there—or a memory?—reforming in Niko’s mind: being carried _away_ , twisting and reaching back for someone, screaming a long wordless note.

“But why?” Nikolai asks, reaching forward. “Why won’t—“

“I said _go home,_ Niko!”

The shout is sharp, cracking through the air.

Nikolai takes a frightened step backward, and then another. The man watches him, breathing heavily in the quiet that follows and shaking with a quiet ferocity. He nods once more toward the gate, sternly, and Niko turns and goes: runs toward the fence and out onto the sidewalk and down the street.

He glances back only once. The man hasn’t moved. He nods back is to Niko, and his shoulders are slumped in a way that make him look small.

Niko clutches more tightly to the gloves.

It’s then that he realizes the man knew his name.

.

There’s a table of Americans in the corner. They’re talking and laughing loudly—or one of them is, at least—drawing curious glances from the other patrons, and Nikolai leans out from behind the counter to watch them. There are three of them seated at the table, still bundled in their hats and scarves and jackets, but the two that are seated facing him have the top buttons of their jackets undone and Niko can see the distinctive patterning of Starfleet jerseys: command gold and science—or medical?—blue.

Niko clutches at his backpack and purses his lips. So there are more American Starfleet officers in town. He still has the gloves in his backpack. He could ask them about the man they belong to. Perhaps they know each other? Perhaps they can return the gloves to him?

He looks back. _Tetya_ is still speaking to her colleague. Niko sucks in a huge breath and steps out from behind the counter, holding his backpack in front of him like a shield.

The man with the gold shirt is speaking, telling a story to the other two, though he keeps interrupting himself for loud bursts of laughter. The man with the blue jersey is more quietly amused, shaking his shoulders and nursing at his coffee. When he lifts his mug he notices Niko’s approach.

“Good _God,_ ” he swears, voice unfurling with a long vowel sounds, and the laughter comes to an abrupt end.

The third man at the table turns slowly, and Niko can see the dark hair sticking out from underneath his hat, and then his bare, gloveless hands wrapped around the coffee mug for warmth, and finally his eyes, which are wide and fearful.

The café has gone quiet around them, and it descends upon him with a ferocity that shakes all the words from his head. Nikolai feels rooted to the spot, and he clutches at the backpack like it’s a lifeline now.  “I—“ He swallows thickly. “I—wanted to—“

A hand drops onto his shoulder, and _Tetya_ ’s voice speaks over him in cool, clipped, but very clear Standard. “Captain Kirk.”

The eyes of the café shift from him to his aunt, who has come to stand behind him, and even Nikolai swivels his head to look. Her expression is hard and unforgiving, and the man in the gold shirt—the captain—quickly rises to his feet and sets his shoulders back into a respectful attention.

The other two men at the table follow to their feet, though much more slowly.

“ _Gospozha_ Kaminski,” the captain replies, his tone warm and smile broad despite _Tetya’s_ cold greeting. “A pleasure to finally meet you in person.”

“I wish I could say the same.” _Tetya_ takes Nikolai’s hand in hers and grips it with bruising strength.

“Where are my manners,” Captain Kirk says, not missing a beat, still smiling pleasantly. “This is my Chief Medical Officer, Doctor McCoy, and my helmsman, Lieutenant-Commander—“

“I know who he is.”  The words lash out like a whip, and the Lieutenant-Commander rocks backward on his feet like he’s been struck. But _Tetya_ doesn’t look at him; she doesn’t even acknowledge him, speaking instead to the captain like the other two men don’t exist. “I received your messages. I gave Starfleet my opinion on the subject: that you’ve taken enough from him, that he owes you nothing more, that you should be gone from his life. I was overruled. They’ve forced me to let you have your meeting, Captain, and you will, but _at your appointed time_. No sooner.”

Nikolai feels his heartbeat through his whole body—a desperate _squeeze._

“Ma’am, we—“

“If you don’t mind, Captain, my _Kolya_ is late for an appointment at the Starfleet Medical Annex. Because one life was not enough for you.”

.

Nikolai puts his hand to the glossy finish of the desk, leaving his fingerprints there in small smudges. “Where was I born?”

He’s been thinking about it a lot. He knows he didn’t always live with his _Tetya;_ his earliest memories are abstract images of bright places and shiny things, pressing his hand against glass and seeing darkness outside. Now he also remembers leaving this place, screaming and crying and reaching backward for someone.

Doctor Volkova sets her pen down and folds her hands, watching him closely. “You were born during a deep-space exploratory mission.”

“So—on a starship? The _Enterprise?_ ”

“Yes. “ She leans forward in her seat. “Why do you ask?”

Nikolai shifts in his chair, tucking his hands underneath his knees. His feet swing freely from the chair. “Who took care of me?” He tries not to look too eager about the question.

“You were a ward of the crew. That means everyone looked after you. But the captain or chief medical officer would have had executive authority regarding your welfare.”

“Captain Kirk,” Nikolai says. “And Doctor McCoy.”

“Yes.” Doctor Volkova blinks slowly, like she’s underwater. “Where do these question come from? Has… someone approached you?”

.

Nikolai is too old for stuffed animals, but he still has one that he keeps on a high shelf in his room. It’s a bear dressed in a small Starfleet command uniform—the kind that his father would have worn—and he’s had it for as long as he can remember. The bear’s fur has gone soft from repeated washings; Niko used to take it with him everywhere, until he started school and the other students teased him for it.

He takes it off the shelf now and carries it downstairs, hugging it tightly.

_Tetya_ is waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Her expression is like stone, and she straightens his collar and combs through his hair with brisk motions.

“ _Tetya,_ ” he says, because even though he wants this, he’s also a little afraid.

She brushes his shoulders, and then kneels down in front of him to take his hands. “They will love you, because they loved your father. They will smile their smiles and tell you great stories, and I think that you will fall in love just as much as Pavel did. But, _Kolya,_ do not forget: they serve Starfleet. Listen to their stories and be polite and thank them, but remember that you are not your father.” She squeezes his hands hard. “You look so much like him.”

He frowns. “ _Tetya?”_ But there’s a knock at the door, and Tetya stands and moves to open it.

Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy are impressive figures in the doorway. They’re dressed in Starfleet Dress Uniforms, neat and crisp and decorated with glittering badges. Captain Kirk removes his hat and offers _Tetya_ his hand. “ _Gospozha_ Kaminski. It’s good to see you again. You have a lovely home.”

“Yes,” _Tetya_ sniffs, stepping aside. “Sooner began, sooner ended. My nephew has school in the morning. I’ve set some drinks out for you in the den.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Kirk says, but he’s not looking at _Tetya._ He’s looking at Nikolai.

He steps further into the house and kneels down so that he and Nikolai are at eye level. He smiles warmly. “Hi.”

Nikolai hugs his bear tighter to his chest. He feels like there’s a snow flurry in his stomach, rising up in to his throat. “Hello.”

“My name’s Jim. You probably don’t remember me, but I knew you when you were very little.”

“On the _Enterprise._ ” Niko nods solemly. “Doctor Volkova told me. You took care of me when I was a baby, after my dad died.”

Captain Kirk breathes slowly, and Nikolai feels his skin prickle with nervousness because the captain looks upset by this, like Nikolai’s said the wrong thing. Kirk looks back toward Doctor McCoy, still standing just inside the doorway, and they communicate something silently between them. But when Kirk turns back to Nikolai, he’s smiling.

“A lot of people took care of you. It’s a miracle you learned to walk at all, considering you had a line of people wrapping around the deck waiting for a chance to hold you.”

Niko smiles. It’s a pleasant image, even though he’s sure it isn’t true.

“There are a lot of people that wanted to be here today, to meet you again,” Kirk says, and while Nikolai doesn’t think that he’s _lying,_ the way that he says it makes Nikolai think there’s a deeper truth nested between the words: a message that the captain wants Niko to have.  “You were— _are_ —loved.”

“And I remember this guy.” Kirk reaches out very slowly and pats Nikolai’s bear on the head. “Ensign Bear. An exemplary officer, and a credit to Starfleet. It was hard to lose him, I’ll admit, but I knew he’d do good work here.”

Niko holds the bear out and looks at it like he’s never really seen him before. “’Ensign Bear?’”

The captain straightens the sleeves on the bear’s uniform shirt. “You went everywhere together. You’d drag him around behind you and gnaw on one ear and cry if he was left behind in quarters. You even threw him, once, when you got angry. That little stuffed bear sailing across the mess hall? Bones, d’you remember that?”

The doctor shrugs, but he’s smiling a little.

“Nikolai,” _Tetya_ says, and she gives him a stern look, “Don’t keep our guests standing in the hallway.”

Niko shows the doctor and the captain into the den, and they take the two chairs, leaving the couch for Nikolai. He plants himself uncertainly in the center while the two men pour coffee for themselves.

Doctor McCoy’s face doesn’t reveal much; he studies Nikolai without being critical, observing him the way that doctors do. But Captain Kirk smiles at Niko over the rim of his coffee mug like he’s nervously excited, and fidgets in his seat as he settled, like the room can’t contain all his energy. Niko feels nervous, too, but also curious. His aunt and his Starfleet counselors and his teachers never tell him anything important; they tell him it’s classified, or he’s too young, or it’s too complicated. But this man knows secrets about Nikolai’s life and he grins like he wants to share them all, and Niko wants to let him.

.

[ **BONUS SCENE** : This doesn't fit into the narrative, but I wrote it for fun and am including it for context?]

Hikaru holds him longer than he should. He can feel Niko’s agitation growing the longer he waits, the longer he says nothing, but Hikaru holds him anyway, like he’s charging a battery inside his heart. He wants to believe that he can keep this memory: the way his downy hair smells clean and new, and how his body is so warm it leaves an impression on Hikaru’s clothes, and the way his little breaths sound. He wants to believe that he can box this feeling and take it out on some dark day, when he needs it, turn it over in his hands like the pictures he keeps of Pavel, but he knows that he can’t, he knows that once Niko steps onto the transporter pad it will be gone.

He holds him tighter, and tries not to cry.

“It’s time.”

It’s not said cruelly, but it’s dispassionate. Unfeeling.

Pavel always spoke of being lonely, when he was at home. He never had any friends, no peers that he felt he could relate to. And it will be the same for Niko. As much as Hikaru wants to believe they’re different people, as much as he wants to give Niko everything Pavel never had, he can’t save him from this.

He brushes Niko’s curls back and kisses his forehead, and the doctor reaches forward to pry him out of his arms.

“Sulu?” Niko asks, alarmed now. “ _Sulu?”_

Hikaru thinks that sound will be etched into his sternum forever: an invisible scar matching a wound that could have— _should_ _have_ —killed him.

Niko starts to cry, and then he starts to wail in earnest, trying to climb over the shoulder of the man holding him to get back to Hikaru. His little fingers wave in the air, and he screams incoherently and cries, and Hikaru feels it all like it’s happening to himself. It’s actually him being carried away, kicking and screaming, railing at the universe to bring Pavel back, to give Niko back, to let him keep some shred of his heart.

He would wave and smile, if he could, so that Niko would know to not be afraid, but he can’t.

He stands like a stone and watches as they carry him onto the pad and the transporter engages.

There’s a moment where Niko still exists in the afterimage burnt into Hikaru’s retina, and then it fades and he’s gone for good, and Doctor McCoy presses a hypo to Hikaru’s neck, and he’s gone for good too.

**Author's Note:**

> Starfleet took baby!Niko away due to the circumstances surrounding Pavel's death, and Hikaru gets him back in the end? I'm not really sure how to explain this. But this story is going nowhere and I keep wasting time on it, and I just need to nail the coffin shut and move on.
> 
> Tumblr user samisketches drew an absolutely _gorgeous_ image of little Niko, and it's actually the cutest thing ever, and you can view it [here.](http://samisketches.tumblr.com/post/98283563631/a-lil-doodle-of-niko-to-help-spacebromance-feel)


End file.
